The present invention relates to an air bag system in which a folded air bag and an inflator are supported on a retainer, so that the air bag is inflated to be deployed into a passenger compartment of a vehicle by a gas produced by the inflator at the time of collision.
An air bag system is known from Japanese Patent Publication No. 3353463 in which locations on an internal surface of an air bag adapted to be deployed into a passenger compartment of a vehicle by a gas supplied from an inflator at the time of collision of the vehicle are coupled together by a string-like body, so that an increase in the capacity of the air bag is restricted by virtue of a tension produced by the string-like body at the time of deployment of the air bag, whereas, when an internal pressure of the air bag reaches a predetermined value as the result of secondary collision of an occupant against the air bag, the string-like body stretches or breaks so as to allow a further increase in the capacity of the air bag to thereby increase the performance of restraining the occupant.
With the aforesaid conventional air bag system, however, a job of attaching the string-like body to the interior of the air bag is troublesome, increasing the processing costs. Moreover, controlling the configuration of the air bag in the deployment step as required is difficult with the tension of the string-like body.